SWARM-BOTS and SWARMANOID

SWARM-BOTS is concerned with the design, implementation and control of a swarm of homogeneous (i.e., physically identical) robots that cooperate to solve problems that go beyond the individual robots capabilities. Information on the Swarm-bots project can be found at the
following address: www.swarm-bots.org.

SWARMANOID extends the study of SWARM-BOTS project to swarms of physically heterogeneous robots: in this case a swarm includes robots that move on the ground, that fly and that can climb vertical surfaces.

The main scientific objective of these research projecst are the design,
implementation and control of a novel distributed robotic system. The
systems focused on are made up of heterogeneous, dynamically connected, small
autonomous robots.
The swarmanoid that we intend to build will be comprised of numerous
(about 60) autonomous robots of three types: eye-bots, hand-bots,
and foot-bots.

SYMBRION

The main focus of the SYMBRION project is to investigate and develop
novel principles of adaptation and evolution for symbiotic multi-robot
organisms based on bio-inspired approaches and modern computing
paradigms. Such robot organisms consist of super-large-scale swarms of
robots, which can dock with each other and symbiotically share energy
and computational resources within a single artificial-life-form. When
it is advantageous to do so, these swarm robots can dynamically
aggregate into one or many symbiotic organisms and collectively interact
with the physical world via a variety of sensors and actuators.

The bio-inspired evolutionary paradigms combined with robot embodiment
and swarm-emergent phenomena, enable the organisms to autonomously
manage their own hardware and software organization. In this way,
artificial robotic organisms become self-configuring, self-healing,
self-optimizing and self-protecting from both hardware and software
perspectives. This leads not only to extremely adaptive, evolve-able
and scalable robotic systems, but also enables robot organisms to
reprogram themselves without human supervision and for new, previously
unforeseen, functionality to emerge. In addition, different symbiotic
organisms may co-evolve and cooperate with each other and with their
environment.

CoCoRo

Collective Cognitive Robots (2011-2014)

The CoCoRo project aims to create an autonomous swarm of interacting,
cognitive robots. CoCoRo will develop a swarm of autonomous underwater
vehicles (AUVs) that are able to interact with each other and which
can balance tasks. Focal tasks of the CoCoRo-swarms are: ecological
monitoring, searching, maintaining, exploring and harvesting resources
in underwater habitats. By developing an embodied and distributed
system of AUVs, CoCoRo researches the potential of
cognition-generating software, which is supported by a suitable
hardware concept.

The reason for choosing an underwater scenario is
that a robotic system in such an environment faces new challenges that
have not yet been solved. The inability to easily access the system in
situ requires a high degree of autonomy of the agents. The complex and
unpredictable environment requires great flexibility of the system and
the three-dimensional mobility of the AUVs requires novel engineering
principles and robot control approaches. For this purpose, collective
cognitive capabilities derived from animals (e.g. social insect
societies) will be used underwater for the first time.